Sticky bolt can be one of two things. First if dry fired a lot , the slot that the cocking piece rides in can get beat up . That will make the bolt lift much harder . IT can be sanded back smooth . On the custom rifles I build from Carcanos , the more you smooth up that surface , the slicker the bolt gets . What bullet was in the ammo you used , .264 or .268 ? The .268 bullet is made wrong and can cause pressure problems in many guns . That will also make the bolt hard to lift . What do the primers and case heads look like on fired brass ? 50 yards will not tell you much , that is so close even smooth bores shoot ok there , it takes about 70 yards for a problem to start to show . It will deviate at LEAST 3x at 100 and 6x at 200 .

Sticky bolt can be one of two things. First if dry fired a lot , the slot that the cocking piece rides in can get beat up . That will make the bolt lift much harder . IT can be sanded back smooth . On the custom rifles I build from Carcanos , the more you smooth up that surface , the slicker the bolt gets . What bullet was in the ammo you used , .264 or .268 ? The .268 bullet is made wrong and can cause pressure problems in many guns . That will also make the bolt hard to lift . What do the primers and case heads look like on fired brass ? 50 yards will not tell you much , that is so close even smooth bores shoot ok there , it takes about 70 yards for a problem to start to show . It will deviate at LEAST 3x at 100 and 6x at 200 .

The bullets are .268 from Graf & Son's ammo. The previous ammo I was using was the PPU stuff with the boat tail bullets that caused feeding issues. The brass looked fine except upon close inspection there appeared to be a light scrape not too far up from the base. So is there no correctly sized factory ammo out there? The rifle did not feel "off" or unusual in any way upon firing.

Sticky bolt can be one of two things. First if dry fired a lot , the slot that the cocking piece rides in can get beat up . That will make the bolt lift much harder . IT can be sanded back smooth . On the custom rifles I build from Carcanos , the more you smooth up that surface , the slicker the bolt gets . What bullet was in the ammo you used , .264 or .268 ? The .268 bullet is made wrong and can cause pressure problems in many guns . That will also make the bolt hard to lift . What do the primers and case heads look like on fired brass ? 50 yards will not tell you much , that is so close even smooth bores shoot ok there , it takes about 70 yards for a problem to start to show . It will deviate at LEAST 3x at 100 and 6x at 200 .

The bullets are .268 from Graf & Son's ammo. The previous ammo I was using was the PPU stuff with the boat tail bullets that caused feeding issues. The brass looked fine except upon close inspection there appeared to be a light scrape not too far up from the base. So is there no correctly sized factory ammo out there? The rifle did not feel "off" or unusual in any way upon firing.

You may need to polish the chamber to smooth out whatever is causing that scrape.